When cartels force fans to shun the game
THE old adage that is hinged on the customer being “King’’, is taking centre stage in our local football stadiums as we witness empty stands glaring displaying the monolithic concrete structures that edify the sordid state of our drowning football.
When lack of progressive ideas brings monolithic status quo of decline, plunging and morgue bound, we have to admit that football capture by cartels and Mafia gangsters in cahoots of plundering the FIFA grants and narrow streams of finances that flow into our football has finally crippled the game to its knees.
One social media group circulated two photos of Dynamos with contrasting support bases. The 1999 photo had a blue multitude of ardent fans while the recent image of 2022 bared the sad reality of decline and a morgue bound sport.
So many theories have been proffered as possible causes of this dreadful football peril but, the bold truth is being skirted nonchalantly, yet the root causes stem from the presence of cartels and Mafia gangsters in all structures of the game.
Mafia gangsters are not only in the national federation but, they spread their tentacles in some clubs as well. One wonders why things have become this tragic, we are all terrified with this beckoning calamity that has paralysed our football.
Our football needs a complete overhaul to save us from the pending disasters that have conscripted us in the FIFA ban, eyesore derelict stadiums, plunder of grants, dearth of progressive junior development programmes, poor administration and management of football as a modern professional sport.
The current education curriculum review coalesces the flight of fans from the stadiums, football capture and lack of development programmes in primary schools that help to promote and further encourage continuous sports activities that enhance stability.
One would have thought that most clubs, various stakeholders and national federations would have seized this opportunity by engaging their wider audience to vigorously debate about sport decline and plunder. No amount of wishful thinking that the expelled ZIFA president Felton Kamambo had a deeper understanding of how our sport could be fixed.
His tenure of office only consolidates the pandemonium created by cartels of the voting councillors who have brought us this far.
We seem to have far too many social media platforms that “know all about how to invite national team players, coaches, formations’’ etc. Yet when it comes to the gist of the matters of football capture and its pending tragedies, they all develop cold feet.
This curriculum review is pursuant from the 2015 outcomes of the Dr Nziramasanga-led commission that implemented the recommendations of Inquiry into Education and Training (CEIT).
A United Nations report stated that there was a visible drop in literacy levels from 95 to 93 percent, hence this curriculum review being conducted to arrest a -2 % deficit. The right to education is enshrined in the constitution and, yet we have government policies such as the NDS1 critically define the importance of macroeconomics and the development human resource capital bases, as contradictory and selective to two young Zimbabweans whose stations in life are located at two different spectrums of academic abilities.
The more gifted learner has an inalienable right covered by the constitutional order that provides for legislative inquiry on any deemed failures, whilst the other less gifted learner, sport gifted athlete guided by the NDS1 national policy is left at the mercy of marauding predators safely ensconced in the corridors of power in ZIFA or any of these national federations of sport.
Such inequalities are too glaringly selective, and only instil the social divide that commonly pity academia and the less gifted. So the right before the constitution is alienated when tragedies in sport fail to attract the same magnitude of the current curriculum reviews being undertaken every seven years.
Football in Zimbabwe has been on the death-bed for so long, yet the lukewarm effort being done lacks the aggressive approach being spearheaded by Dr Ndlovu in trying to arrest a -2% deficit in literacy levels. One wonders if the disasters of football where ever to be witnessed in the academic settings, a swift response and very tough hard-line approach would be instituted without delay.
The customer is “King’’ of the game, has to be reminded that “what is good for the goose, the gander deserves the same’’. The only way out of this mess is align the sport activities with the academic curriculum reviews so that critical engagements can be discussed and applied across the board to suit both learners’ future location stations.